Trying not to be obvious

 I continue to play the sage. Saying new things (if possible) in a new way. 

Why? Because unthinking worn phrases and tired greetings risk being ignored

We have a celebration coming up. The family will foregather on Skype, the ultimate form of social distancing. “But it’s not the same as giving someone a hug,” people whinge. No, but you learn things.

Patience, for instance. If conversations overlap nobody hears what’s said. You wait your turn and – mayhap – you refine what you have to say. Drop the clichés; incline towards the truth.

There may be eight of us. Waiting, one has ample time to watch faces known all their lives. Our elder daughter, aged three, wearing a blue cardigan (a garment that seems to recur in our dilapidated photo albums) and waving a pickled egg pierced by a table-fork. Younger daughter weeping copious tears for no good reason; it was a period she was passing through.

Now they’re pushing middle age. They know about money, are outspoken about politics, have musical tastes that are alien to me. Both desperate for France in July, fearing it won’t happen, joking about alternatives in the UK (“Lincolnshire would be peaceful but it’s oh so flat.”)

Families break up into mini-island families. It’s to be applauded. The parents have done their bit – it’s to be hoped – and must fade into oblivion. The mini-islands are now real islands, integrated and self-supporting; the parents staring at faces that appear mysteriously to have grown up.

With luck nostalgia will be kept at bay. It’s a disease, an abnegation of the future. The golden eras are all in the present, a revelling in the power of thought and an ability to time travel without stirring. Future Skypes will be “smellies”; see Aldous Huxley.